Onwards to Imja Tse (Island Peak)

Once again only a few min to write and this keyboard is terrible. We had quite the bus ride back to Kathmandu on Friday. Students were happy to arrive back at our original hotel – after some free time there was a group dinner at ‘Rum Doodle’ – a restaurant visited by many climbers with signatures all over the walls. Yesterday was spent visiting Bhaktapur a UNESCO world heritage site as well as the largest public teaching hospital which left quite a few impressions on students. The course officially ended this morning after breakfast. We have two students spending some more time on their own in Nepal and eight more travelling as a group to India for perhaps a week. One more will continue onwards to the states rather than stay in India. They have already made their own arrangements to stay in the same hotel and to get transport to the airport through Dorjee. All our in good spirits and I have asked them to email me once they are home safe.

Tandra and I were joined by our Seattle friend Alex Uy who flew in this afternoon. We are flying to Lukla in about 7hrs (I need to finish this, pack and sleep!) with the goal of climbing Imja Tse (Island Peak) which is about 20,285ft. We will be guided by Tse Wong Sherpa, older brother of Dorjee, who has climbed it at least 15 times as well as climbed Everest twice. So we are in good hands. It is not very technical, just high. The rough schedule is below. the next good internet access will be in Namche (though expensive). I am disconnecting the UWNepal2010 twitter feed from this page as the course is now over and this was never intended to really serve as a course site. We are continuing to rent the sat phone. The new SPOT GPS page, showing the last 7 days is at: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces /viewspots.jsp?glId=0geIM0Wde9AWF3OgtqPYkfFBupzGAHt7M but I am not linking it up to my swolpin twitter account I think… The shared page showing the last 7 days of the Annapurna trek should be at: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0XtcvNWuqOHkhCQ0gk9sDaqorRi1SB9xu

Mew schedule is below.

9/13: Phakding
9/14,15: Namche for two days
9/16: Tengboche
9/17: Pheriche
9/18: Loboche
9/19:Maybe climb Kala Patar
9/20: Chukhing
9/21: Imja Tse Base Camp – day trip to high camp
9/22: Summit Day
9/23: dingboche
9/24 Namche or Lukla
I think we fly out of Lukla on the 26th at 7am. A couple days in KTM and then back to the states around the 29th.